Final Fantasy IX halps!

Everything works fine except for battles (slows right down). I'm just wondering which video plug-in and configuration works best.
I'm using ePSXe 1.7.0

Most of Pete's should do, you should try using ePSXe 1.5.2 as well. Make sure you have the 'Nice' setting enabled.

Also, are you playing the game off of a CD or have you ripped the game to an ISO (or downloaded it from here?)I've noticed even with a good system, when playing FF9 directly off the Disc, the loading times causes battle related slowdowns. I got around them by creating ISOs from my FF9 Discs.But as Anandjones said, I used 1.5.2 with Pete's OpenGL2 driver set to "Nice" and turned on the game fixes for FF9's battle swirl.

I am using the ISO from here. I'll try that plug-in with said settings.
will edit post with response